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Sergeant Corbett, driver of the lead machine, cursed as he barked his knuckles on the last recalcitrant shackle, pulled it free of the eye inset in the deck, and hurled it aside. As he did this, green electric lights in the ceiling came on, controlled from the ship’s bridge.
“Start your engines!” he bellowed. Drivers and gu
“Switched off!” Corbett shouted back.
Hoobler braced himself and turned the handle the required four times, grunting with the effort of pumping oil into the engine’s bearings and fuel into its cylinders; gu
“Battery switch on,” he gasped.
“On!” the sergeant shouted back and thrust closed the small bayonet switch on the control panel. He had to raise his voice above the din of the many barking, hammering Carnot-cycle engines that were bursting into life. Hoobler gave a mighty swing of the handle, but instead of starting, the engine backfired. He cried out in pain as the starting handle kicked back in reverse and broke his arm.
At this same moment the bow door opened and the blaze of sunlight revealed him sitting on the deck nursing his wounded arm. Cursing even more vociferously, Sergeant Corbett jumped down and bent over the wounded man; the crooked angle of his lower arm was vivid evidence of what had happened.
The tank deck was now an inferno of hammering exhausts and clouds of reeking fumes. As the landing ramp went down, soldiers rushed forward from the machines to the rear, shouldered the sergeant and his wounded gu
“I need a gu
His words were drowned out by the roar of a ca
“I shot one of them Gatlings in training!”
The gun captain seized the firing lanyard. “I can spare one man!” he called back, then fired the ca
The bark of his engine joined the roar of the others, echoed out from the interior of the cavernous ship. A steady stream of tanks, the Gatling carriers, rolled out and down onto the riverbank. Followed by more — and yet still more machines. While fore and aft the companionways had been dropped and a tide of blue uniforms flowed down from the ship and onto the English soil.
“Fire!” Corbett shouted as they clattered off the ramp onto the cobbles. His new gu
The defending troops were mowed down like a field of grain by the rapid-firing Gatling guns. Some of the defenders fired back, but their bullets merely clanged off the armored front shields of the carriers.
On the bridge of the Atlas, high above, General Sherman looked down at the surging battle. The enemy line appeared to be broken, the defenders dead or fleeing the blue-clad troops now moving past the slower gun carriers.
“Cavalry!” someone shouted, and Sherman looked up to see the mounted soldiers pouring out of the streets that led to Whitehall and Horse Guards Parade. Brigadier Somerville had done an exemplary job in alerting the defenses. The American soldiers turned to face this new threat on their flank — but the Gatling carriers surged past them. Their exhausts roaring loudly, pumping out clouds of acrid smoke, they surged forward toward the cavalry. Now, with swords raised, helmets and cuirasses gleaming, the horsemen charged at the gallop.
And were destroyed. Just as the Light Brigade had been when they had charged the Russian lines in the Crimea. But here were rapid-firing guns, more deadly at close range than any ca
None survived. General Sherman went down from the ship’s bridge to join his staff waiting for him on the shore.
HMS Viperous, the pride of the British navy, led the attack. After taking aboard the pilot off Dungeness, she proceeded at a stately five knots into the main cha
There were the American war craft, four hulking black ships drawn up in line across the river.
“Fire when your guns bear,” he ordered, looking at the enemy through his glasses. He had never seen ships like this before. Armor was all that he could see — with no sign of gun ports at all. There was a mighty roar as the forward gun turret fired; the ship’s fabric shook beneath his feet.
Good shooting. He could see the shells explode against the armor of the ship in the center of the line. The smoke cleared, he could see no signs of damage — then a cloud of smoke blossomed up from behind the enemy’s armor. He had a quick glimpse of an immense shell climbing in a high arc, seemingly suspended in space before it dropped. An enormous fountain of water sprang up beside the port bow, drenching the foredeck.
Even before the first shell struck, a second was on its way. This struck the Viperous amidships, and the tremendous explosion almost blew the mighty ship in two.
Anchored and ready, the mortar batteries were as deadly against the slow-moving enemy as they had been against the fortress on land. Within a minute the mortally wounded iron ship had settled to the riverbed, with shells sending up massive waterspouts around the rest of the attacking fleet as they withdrew out of range.
Sherman’s rear defenses were secured. He need fear no attacks from the river as long as the floating batteries were in place.
BUCKINGHAM PALACE ATTACKED
More and still more of the Gatling-gun carriers emerged from Atlas and rumbled down the ramp. These had been stowed deep in the ship’s hold and had climbed to the disembarking level using a series of interior ramps between decks.
Nor was Atlas now the only ship tied up at the embankment. While the ironclads stayed on station in midriver, the transports at the river wall had sent their soldiers charging ashore. Regiments of riflemen were forming up even as the first ca